If Silk Flowers Bloom by the Water’s Edge Chapter 92

A mysterious power dwelt within the word “kiss.” As if creating a word that didn’t exist in the world, from that exact moment, it made one look only at the other person’s lips. She expected a reaction that would snub her, telling her not to talk such nonsense, but the cabin was entirely filled with silence. Chaehwa stared blankly at his lips, which were shaped like a high half-moon. His lips, which he bit every single day with his canines, were the color of a well-ripened peach.

“…Since it’s an experiment. Just a tiny bit.”

Breaking away from the lips that caught her eyes, she looked up at Yirok. His eyes, making it impossible to know what he was thinking, were sunken darkly. Only the sound of sparks popping was noisy, like the finale of a festival.

As the time Yirok held out without saying a word grew longer, the concentration of Chaehwa’s regret deepened. It wasn’t that she brought it up because she crazily coveted Yirok’s lips. It was a heart similar to wanting to tease a girl who caught a caterpillar and liked it.

Hadn’t the glint in Yirok’s eyes changed—the one who used to let out a sigh whenever he looked at her, just as she intended? She thought his face would turn into a red carrot and he would be restless if she mentioned a kiss.

“Hey… Yirok. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Did her appearance, after being rinsed in icy water and coming out, look ugly to him? It was just when she was clearing away with her hand the bangs that came down curling. The shadow cast in an instant froze Chaehwa’s hand like wax. Chaehwa, in a posture with her hand placed on her forehead, managed to gather her concentration with effort. Yirok lowered his face as if he had no intention of giving her a gap to snap out of it. Near the tip of her nose, he tilted his head sideways.

His eyes, which had shed their boyishness, were reproaching her. As if he had no intention of giving her even a gap to collect her mind, his head tilted diagonally near the tip of her nose.

“Actually, it’s a joke…”

Chch, at the sound of their lips clashing, Chaehwa’s eyes opened wide. Her hand gripping the blanket dropped helplessly, unable to budge. It was just when Chaehwa, who had spoken of a kiss so boldly, turned red in the face and was drawing her body backward. A well-shaped bridge of the nose stuck to her tenaciously and caught Chaehwa. Chasing after her as if telling her to just try and escape, he pressed his lips. Chch, addicted to the sweet sound made by the mouth, Yirok closes his eyes.

“…Wait.”

The place she touched to push Yirok away happened to be his bare chest. Chaehwa, who took both hands off with a start as if she had touched a boiling kettle, was flustered by a situation she had never thought about. Beneath the gaze that watched her silently, her voice crawled inward.

“It’s not, I guess it’s not. I guess a kiss wasn’t the answer.”

“We haven’t done it yet.”

“Huh?”

“Is this a kiss?”

Because they were sharing a single blanket wrapped around them, there wasn’t even a proper space to back away. The more she consciously minded the other person, the more Chaehwa’s words lost their way and she rambled.

“Yirok, do you, well, know about kissing?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is a kiss. Forget it. The experiment is over now. Quickly roast the beef jerky. I’m… I’m hungry.”

“Have you ever kissed before?”

“Me?”

Like an ignoramus who couldn’t distinguish whether it was water or lava, Chaehwa took the blanket in her hands and squeezed it tightly. If she said she had never done it, Yirok would mock her, telling her to look at that.

“I have.”

If having a goodnight kiss with her grandmother counted as a kiss, that is. The face of Yirok, who was fishing into her kissing experience, wore an inexplicably strange expression. She cannot read his thoughts. Chaehwa, whose under-eyes had become hollow, was not allowed to avoid his eyes. The touch snatching her chin was close to temptation.

“I asked if you’ve done it before.”

“I told you I have…”

“With whom.”

“Just, just…”

The green frog disposition of only wanting to pull her feet out of an important part was activated. Chch, however, along with a soft kiss, Yirok’s glint in his eyes asked for the truth. Yirok rubbed the tip of her chin with his pinky finger as if soothing her.

“With Shinwoo?”

“No.”

“Chaho?”

“Do you think I’d just kiss anyone?”

“I think you would.”

“Do you think I’m like you, Yirok? I, I…”

As if it wasn’t enough just to embarrass her, he came down near her lips and spoke to her.

“For me, you are the first.”

“…So?”

“I’m saying it’s the first.”

In a tone as if he had told her all the information he had to tell, Yirok attempted to steal her lips the rest of the way. He possessed Chaehwa’s lips naturally, as if there had never been a disruption in the middle. Chch, the kiss that made a sound was on the cute side. The lips that wouldn’t detach came to know Chaehwa clumsily, or with good tact.

He rolled his tongue like a child practicing speaking articulately. The eyes of Chaehwa, who had bluffed that she had tried kissing, closed slowly. Yirok, who knew her bumbling personality well, led their first kiss.

A peach flavor doesn’t come from Yirok’s lips. Instead, a subtle sweetness she hadn’t expected satisfied Chaehwa’s palate. An ordinary person would get a heart attack while kissing like this. Chaehwa placed her hands on his firm thighs and pulled her upper body forward. Yirok stretched his hand backward and supported her swaying nape.

Chaehwa, who brought up the kiss in the first place, bore a certain part of the responsibility. However, it was only right that Yirok should bear most of the remaining responsibility. Isn’t it extremely natural to pull her lips away because she wanted to breathe heavily? Even in kissing, there is a stage and an order.

“Wait… just a little.”

However, Yirok boldly pulled Chaehwa’s chin as if trying to find his lost lips. Chaehwa, who came to give up her lips without even being able to rest much, only blinked her eyes.

“Heu…”

While kissing, one mustn’t laugh, and one mustn’t cry either, right? Chaehwa couldn’t endure it because his passionate movements, as he was turning twenty, were ticklish. Conversely, the situation of each other possessing their lips to their hearts’ content, if only inside the vision grass, was sad. Once they went outside the vision grass, there was plenty of things like the young lady, an outsider haenang, and things that could hardly make herself like herself.

Chaehwa hardened a big resolve and whipped her head around, shaking off his grip. Yirok, who had been plunged into something worse than the vision grass for a moment, bit his abandoned lips.

“Why.”

Before she knew it, something like touching Yirok’s bare chest fell into the category of being nothing much. Chaehwa, who lowered her head, covered her face with both hands and began a bashful confession.

“You’re the first for me too… I’m sorry for lying.”

If she lied twice, her lips would probably set up a house inside Yirok’s mouth. The mind to examine the section where the rift in the vision grass was broken, or not, also vanished. Her head was a mess, as if she needed to rest for a day. Chaehwa cleared away her hands and faced Yirok’s expressionless face. Is it a face mortified that the kiss was snatched away? Or is it that he lost interest upon knowing it was a lie?

Pinching the blanket, which had absolutely nothing to do with a kiss, Chaehwa spoke like a monologue.

“Who told you to do it that long… extensively. Are you going to be like that later when you kiss another person too?”

She hated her appearance that came out the moment she had a conversation with Yirok. She wanted to look like a mature and respectable young lady, but the reality is a master of reckless words and a helpless child. To think she brought up another person’s story just when they had finished their first kiss. She bit hard on her tongue, which only picked and committed eccentric deeds.

“Kim Chaehwa.”

“Why do you keep calling me Kim Chaehwa…”

“I’m not doing any more kissing.”

“Huh?”

“Other than you… there’s no person I want to kiss now.”

Even if she lowered her head not to do so, her gaze rose like taking an elevator. Yirok, who sat muffled up in the blanket, was entirely in the middle of facing her since some time ago. As if he had waited for their eyes to meet, Yirok smiled bitterly.

“So if you want to kiss, come to me.”

Yirok tilted his head once, as if it was funny even to himself after he said it. The past when Yirok looked as if he would scratch her with his fingernails even if she just touched him was distant. The man who carelessly wiped his lips with his thumb in front of her eyes wouldn’t be the Yirok she knew.

“You’re not Yirok, are you.”

“Why? It feels like I’m not?”

“Yeah…”

“Then let’s go with me not being him.”

He was behaving exactly like a boy who fell into his first love. Yirok, whose smile had become easy through multiple kisses, pretended to pick up beef jerky and took Chaehwa’s hand instead. Then, he turned his posture around and sat looking at the fire. His words, which made it impossible to know whom he was addressing, came into her ears.

“It’s not like you’re going to see me for a long time either… endure it for just a bit, just a bit.”

It is a statement contrary to his holding her hand as if he wouldn’t let it go. The hot emotion dwelling in her neck flowed down to her chest and gathered like a fever. The affection extending toward Yirok was a texture sticky like melted asphalt. And it was an emotion that neither her grandmother nor anyone else had ever taught her.

“Yirok, you stay with me healthily for a long time. Got it? There’s also a lot to learn as a haenang. I’ll teach you everything.”

That one was the only thing that grated among Yirok’s many, many words. However, Yirok moved his head left and right, as if he disliked making an answer.

“Why?”

“…Just because.”

“Whyy. Do you hate being with me? Do you hate Nanjubeol?”

Forgetting all about the kiss where her lips suffered in that short time, she hung onto Yirok’s arm and poured a baptism of questions. It could well be annoying, but Yirok answered with a nod of his head every time a question came out. Not even knowing how beautifully her lips had swollen, Chaehwa knitted her eyebrows.

“Then where are you going to go after leaving Nanjubeol? Do you have a place to go?”

Yirok straightened the direction of his head, with a look as if he finally had words to answer. Containing Chaehwa alone in his lowered, dark eyes, he spoke.

“If I live with you, I can’t live out my natural lifespan. So…”

It was no wonder that his gaze, which had dropped to an insidious stage, attached to Chaehwa’s lips.

“I’m telling you to come to me only when you want to kiss.”

“You…”

If it hadn’t been for the urgent kiss that ensued, she would have almost mistaken it for eyes that hated each other. The second kiss, which started after they fully shared words and gazes, had a rushed flavor. Attached like a single body beneath the blanket, they learned kissing to a tedious degree. It was a very rudimentary and immature first kiss, where there was no teacher and only two students.